I think a Coordinator called me a "cyber-stalker"--I think I saw that particular phrase in the “Rules and Guidelines” for Soapbox! I usually only have time to read anything once. Maybe it referred to me posting to you on both Journeys and Soapbox (I had just previously posted on both, and was just trying to stay current, as one of the few who still bothers to read and post on Exfam at all)--who knows?

Postings and emails don't infer most emotions, genuine concern, humorous irony, or other subtleties, very well, if at all. Sometimes people assume the worst, and judge according to stereotypes they choose to believe about individuals--too bad--that means we miss a lot of our mutual humanity, and get high-handed and resistant to one another’s commonalities. I already know all of the whys and wherefores of AA, the Big Book, and so on—I’ve professionally taught from it, in a psychiatric ward, as I said, and have thoroughly studied its origins.

In my exposure to 12-Step, the secular groups’ usual insistence is "once an addict, always an addict" (i.e.: no possibility of a Christian "New Creation" a la 2 Cor 5:17, etc.). It’s their secular DOCTRINE.

I guess the best way of looking at that is that they are encouraged to continue in their recovery, “one day at a time”, as you quoted them; always on guard against reversion to prior addictive thinking and behavior, toxic associations with non-recovering addicts, and group excuses for continued toxic choices.

The originators of 12-Step, the Oxford Group, had all 12 steps as specific parts of a 12-Step Christian recovery program, and their success rate was in the high 80s percentile--a fact of history, regardless of any opinion on the matter--as any fair and honest history should be.

The success rate went downhill fast, as the program was secularized, and Jesus Christ, in the 3rd step, was replaced with a "make-up-your-own-god” so-called "higher" power. That's also an historic fact, despite anyone’s wishful thinking.

Unfortunately, the original Oxford Group went way off beam, later, despite its early amazing success with addicts; mostly alcoholics. Their success rate dropped off radically simply because they ceased to exist, while the secular effort continued, but at a much lower success rate.

My point was that secularizing it meant directly a MUCH lower success rate than the original, and that much lower rate exists still.

There do exist renewed versions, EXACTLY like the original.

And, no surprise, their success rate is also EXACTLY like the original--high 80s percentile, all over again. Several Christian 12-Step programs here in Houston, run by standard-doctrine Christian churches, attest to that fact. No one in the liberal press reports it--it's embarrassing to them. That is sad. But no thinking person expects them to NOT have their own POLITICAL AGENDA (that should justify posting this on Soapbox).

Like I said, I've been in and around the industry for some time, as have family members of mine, who are honest with me about it, and always have been, over the years; since I left the cult in mid-1974.

Whatever you might personally think about the various programs that exist, more people are helped, percentage-wise, who get as close to the original as possible.

For instance, purely secular Hobart Mowrer and his student William Glasser “originated" a program called "Reality Therapy". Besides outrightly rejecting the Freudian approach of all mental maladjustments being solely "illness", by sheer failure in the strict application of Freudian therapy, it called for appropriate personal moral responsibility, and even every kind of repentance, EXCEPT repentance towards God. I believe that “all truth is God’s truth”, and that the closer a “therapy “ is to the Bible’s basic tenets of how human beings should treat each other, the more effectively God allows it to work over time. Just so, it "coincidentally" involved almost everything the Gospel recommends: personal repentance (secular version), forgiving oneself, restitution (like the 4th step--fearless moral inventory and restitution where and when possible), and so on. For some reason, although it began to literally empty "hopeless wards", and just about stood the psychology industry on its head, it was eventually abandoned, at least as a "panacea" to mental illness.

Little wonder--similarly, the medical industry makes billions a year treating symptoms of diabetes and NOT finding a cure, although radical weight loss and exercise work far better than years and years of meds that do not lead to lower body-fat weight and more exercise, which have shown to be vastly better for actually treating the disease by lowering blood sugars on a regular basis--all provable by simple lab tests.

Something in your personal belief statement bothers me—it is the operative phrase “if it works”. That is the exact problem, it seems to me. It works for many, many less than it could, and that’s my point. Like I said, there is a resurgence of the original Christian 12-Step program, completely disassociated form the post-Oxford weird group called Moral Disarmament, which currently are enjoying original high 80th percentile success. The liberal media just doesn’t report it, as I have pointed out—political agenda.